American democracy: where candidates have to be acceptable to rich people and corporations or they won’t get the campaign contributions that make them viable. Where everyone has a vote (they can choose between the corporate candidates) but only the people with lots of cash get to meet elected officials. Where every day the media feed us the propaganda created by the vast public relations organizations of government and business, but don’t bother with the perspective of grassroots groups (unless they can accuse them of violence).
It’s not surprising that this “democracy,” the essential features of which are ideological homogeneity and economic authoritarianism, should give us Al Gore and George Bush as the only two individuals with a shot at the presidency. An exhaustive list of their policy differences gun control, abortion, taxes, health care, education and maybe the environment.
Notice how issues important to those who own our economy are almost wholly absent because both Bush and Gore agree with the corporate status quo. Neither candidate wants to reduce the tremendous inequality of wealth and power, neither candidate wants to end or even cut back corporate welfare, neither candidate questions the corporate globalization imposed by the elites of rich and poor countries against the working populations of the world. Child labor, sweatshops, labor repression, crippling debt neither Bush nor Gore has a problem with these, so they go unmentioned.
Gore and Bush also agree on the continuation of our imperialist foreign policy. Over a million Iraqis have been killed by U.S. sanctions, but is either candidate interested in ending the greatest mass murder since the Rwanda genocide? President Clinton will give $1 billion to the brutal Colombian military and its paramilitaries. Does this massive subsidy for those who commit 80 percent of Colombia’s atrocities bother either candidate? Should we continue to send weapons to a Turkish government that has done to its Kurds for 15 years what Serbia did to its Kosovars before NATO intervened? Bush and Gore, with their silence, say yes. The two agree on everything from illegal drugs policy to the need for massive military spending.
Before we can even start to make a real democracy, we need two things. First, full public financing for campaigns to limit the overwhelming influence of wealth. The system would be completely voluntary so as not to offend the Supreme Court’s idea that property is expression, but would include matching funds for any candidate who faces a privately financed opponent.
And second, we need a truly progressive force in electoral politics. Right now the Green Party is our best bet, and if Ralph Nader (who has been ignored by the corporate media) gets 5 percent or better in the presidential election, the Green Party will not only get federal matching funds, but send a message that millions of people are tired of oligarchy.
If you vote for either Gore or Bush, you’re saying that our current system is legitimate. If you prefer to refrain from endorsing economic authoritarianism and imperialist foreign policy you have two choices: don’t vote or vote for someone else. Failing to vote tells politicians they don’t have to address your needs. Voting for the Greens, on the other hand, means you’re ready to turn the United States into a democracy.